Matt > Matt's Quotes

“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”
― Plato, The Symposium

“But that’s where the bad news comes in. Our global civilization came at a huge cost. We needed a whole bunch of energy to build it, and we got that energy by burning fossil fuels, which came from dead plants and animals buried deep in the ground. We used up most of this fuel before you got here, and now it’s pretty much all gone. This means that we no longer have enough energy to keep our civilization running like it was before. So we’ve had to cut back. Big-time. We call this the Global Energy Crisis, and it’s been going on for a while now.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“I tried my best to fit in. Year after year, my eyes would scan the lunchroom like a T-1000, searching for a clique that might accept me. But even the other outcasts wanted nothing to do with me. I was too weird, even for the weirdos. And girls? Talking to girls was out of the question. To me, they were like some exotic alien species, both beautiful and terrifying. Whenever I got near one of them, I invariably broke out in a cold sweat and lost the ability to speak in complete sentences.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“A lot of what drives me and others working in this space is the knowledge that, whatever your constraints, we can always do better, and the desire to help people on their journey.”
― Gene Kim, The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations

“THE PROBLEM: SOMETHING IN YOUR ORGANIZATION MUST NEED IMPROVEMENT (OR YOU WOULDN’T BE READING THIS BOOK)”
― Gene Kim, The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations

“She was hoping that, instead, a great, global natural disaster would rocket humanity into panic, and her small problems would just disappear in the chaos.”
― Julia Spiro, Someone Else's Secret

“Most states’ missing persons statistical figures climb irregularly upward; however, many of the missing on public wildlands aren’t counted. Or they’re not separated from the urban missing. In most states, no one even knows who should be counting. It seems a special mess considering the technological resources we have in our pockets. Sometimes the lost are found, but often not. The mountains are shrouded in fog.”
― Jon Billman, The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America's Wildlands

“At its first test, one device, created at enormous expense to explore the ruins, proved incapable of navigating even minor obstructions; it had to be rescued repeatedly by its operators and ultimately stopped dead in a high-radiation zone. In a scene captured on video and screened that night before the assembled task force, the robot then unexpectedly came back to life and—in a ridiculous pantomime of flashing lights and waving appendages—fled down the corridor, before it screeched and fell on its side and had to be retrieved by its handlers in a blizzard of invective.”
― Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

“On the coldest days, the water plunged into her skin like a knife, but she pushed through. A healthy body really was a healthy mind. It was just water. She knew how a knife felt. The six-inch scar on her abdomen was always the first place to feel the cold.”
― Robert Bryndza, Nine Elms

“India was talking animatedly with Fizzy Martlesham, a severe-looking woman with her hair scraped back from her large forehead.”
― Robert Bryndza, Nine Elms

“Anyway. Maybe you should talk to him.” “Good idea.” Lance would rather have a root canal.”
― Melinda Leigh, Say You're Sorry

“Lance wanted to correct all their misconceptions. Nick was innocent until proven guilty, but now wasn’t the time. Crowds didn’t listen to facts or reason. Crowds acted on emotion, which amplified according to the size of the gathering.”
― Melinda Leigh, Say You're Sorry

“An empty day, though clear and bright,
Is just as dark as any night.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“What I want and what is true seldom have anything to do with each other,”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Reluctant Queen

“Are you well?” Ven asked the headmistress. “Old age,” she replied. “Nothing that a bit of death won’t cure.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Reluctant Queen

“Scars mean we survived something, even when the wounds still hurt.”
― Dot Hutchison, The Summer Children

“He regards us all with grave, worried eyes as he hands out bowls of western scramble, like omelets but lazier.”
― Dot Hutchison, The Summer Children

“there’s a difference between being unashamed of your scars and putting them out for everyone to comment on.”
― Dot Hutchison, The Vanishing Season

“You can be sad today. How many of us allow ourselves to just sit with a feeling like that rather than try to conquer it or push it out of the way?”
― Dot Hutchison, The Vanishing Season

“When everything is spiraling out of control, no one can dig in and hold steady. Not really. They lash out, desperate to grab onto anything. They lash out.”
― Dot Hutchison, The Vanishing Season

“Bran is sprawled across the couch, jeans traded for flannel pants, wearing the long-sleeved University of Miami T-shirt Mercedes bought him three years ago to replace the one she was wearing that accidentally got covered in meth. We have weird occupational hazards.”
― Dot Hutchison, The Vanishing Season

“We have to step away for bits of time, because we’re not going to find anyone or anything if we’re hospitalized after a collapse. Common sense wars with need and leaves you feeling guilty for taking care of yourself.”
― Dot Hutchison, The Vanishing Season

“Being Ymor’s right-hand man was like being gently flogged to death with scented bootlaces.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“A prolonged session at the Whore Pits produced a number of colorful and instructive pictures, a number of which Rincewind concealed about his person for detailed perusal in private.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“A brief silvery flash in the landscape may have been the little river that overflowed into the air at the plateau’s rim. Rincewind tried to force the memory out of his mind, but it was rather enjoying itself there, terrorizing the other occupants and kicking over the furniture.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“It is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“The water around the ship turned from green to purple, from purple to black, from black to a darkness so complete that blackness itself seemed merely gray by comparison.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“​Her voice still sounded the way wasabi tastes.”
― Jack Townsend, Tales from the Gas Station: Volume One

“​Time moves strangely at the gas station, flowing slow and fast all at once, like molasses out of a shotgun.”
― Jack Townsend, Tales from the Gas Station: Volume One